HELFWORKS

Way of Nature

With a turkey baking in the oven, I've opened a window to air the kitchen. Abruptly, a hawk takes off on large wings. It dips and twists through the spreading arms of the elm tree out into open sky. I've not seen the hawk since it lurked one day last month on the branch it uses as dining table. A yellow-bellied sapsucker with brilliant red cap lay there motionless on its back.

I've loved the little woodpeckers. Day by day I'd see one scooting up and down the tree trunk pecking at their grid of holes. It saddened me deeply to see it killed. I'd not cared when the hawk fed on pigeons. There've been so many, and of them, only two small ones I called "the teenagers" impressed and amused me with their togetherness, and the drama of one fighting off another who dared to alight next to his beloved.

Am I a hypocrite to pick favorites and bemoan the cruel way of nature, even as I eat my store-bought fowl? My favorite is actually the elm tree. It supports us all, predators and prey, providing the hawk with perch and concealment, the woodpecker with nourishment, and me with constant beauty and inspiration. But eventually it will fall before its time, done in by the damage from both humans and the very sap-sucking of the little woodpeckers.